While walking down 43rd St on the way from Jalopnik's Manhattan HQ to Grand Central, we spotted this red Camaro sitting right out front of the Avis rental place. After doing a double take we stepped inside to ask what it would cost to take this V6-powered Camaro out for a day or week and were surprised to hear that the rental rate's over $220 for a day and over $700 for a weekly rental on the new bowtied mullet-mobile. Obviously that's a New York rental car pricing, but even for New York it's highway robbery.

Shocking and awe-ing us even more was the news that this particular Avis, which had three Camaros added to their fleet last Friday, have only been able to keep the one out front — and only for half a day on Friday and a few hours yesterday. That means they've already made over $1000 on the three cars in just three days. How's that for a tidy little profit?

We called up Chevy PR and they told us the rental deal's exclusive with Avis as well as giving us a cute little anecdote about a customer who rented a Camaro from AVIS drove the car to a local dealer and immediately placed a deposit on a new Camaro. Well — all we know is at this price point we won't be renting one any time soon. We guess we'll just have to wait to see if GM's able to come through with a month-long "mid-term" loan for us on a Bumblebee-yellow Camaro SS with an RS appearance package.

GM PR's official comment to us on the Avis rental deal:

AVIS is a long-term partner and important customer of GM's. Although they have some SS models, the vast majority of the vehicles in their fleet are LT models. As you know, a lot of the focus for Camaro has been on the LT that delivers 29 MPG HWY and 304 Horsepower. We felt the relationship with AVIS could deliver us the "Life Enthusiasts" we seek to expand the buyer base for Camaro.